Ford sales crashing in Argentina By PAUL HEATH HOEFFEL THE WORLD recession of 1975 is hit- ting Argentina's powerful automotive industry, threatening new layoffs and increased labor strife. The industry, which accounts for 10 percent of Argentina's gross national pro- duct, faces three problems: staggering car price increases (500 per cent in the last year alone) that have wiped out its domestic market, plummeting ex- ports and growing labor unrest. Now 50-year-old Ford-Argentina - the giant of the U.S. auto firms here - is on the verge of pulling out because of the deteriorating situation, according to word circulating in banking circles. While Ford won't comment on the re- ports, it does admit that the industry - which includes GM and Chrysler - has been operating in the red for two years now. Last year, Argentine car buyers jump- ed at the chance to buy a car - even one that was missing a windshield, a back seat and three tires. Today, with car prices up from 8 million pesos to 33 million pesos (roughly $8,000), on c e crowded dealer shops are empty. July sales were five percent of those in June. BOTH THE government and the auto industry are hoping for increased ex- ports to offset the slump in domestic sales. But auto exports are running 25 per cent lower than last year's level and the foreign market shows no signs of improving. The companies' response, so far, has been steady cut backs in production and shorter work weeks. But this has only intensified the third problem plaguing them - labor unrest. Argentina's autoworkers' union SMATA - one of its most militant - has been a persistent critic of the Peron govern- ment. Well after the CGT called a halt to the general strike in July, SMATA workers continued to organize work stoppages in auto plants and hold un- authorized marches of Ford plant work- ers to protest government policies. Hoping to bring this under control, Ford fired 300 workers from its huge plant in the Buenos Aires suburb of Pacheco - workers whom Ford presi- dent Juan Maria Courard characterized as "leftist subversives." THE FIRINGS merely intensified fric- tion with the workers. Today, the Ford plant at Pacheco looks like a prison, with chain fences surrounding its grounds and entrances secured by guards armed with machine guns, shotguns and tear gas. With unemployment rising at 2 per cent a month (250,000 layoffs since June), and no unemployment insurance, the militancy of the auto union appears to be spreading. Labor unions outside the CGT, called coordinatoros, are rap- idly developing in the industrial belts around the major cities, under the lead- ership of leftist Peronists and marxist workers. Meanwhile, rank-and-file work- ers in the CGT are pressuring for unem- ployment insurance, which the CGT op- poses for fear of having to dip into un- ion funds and thereby weaken its fin- ancial position within the government. The government and Army see the growing labor militancy as a direct threat that could lead to major civil strife. The government's effort to cut in- flation by curbing wages triggered the general strike in July. Now the Army has openly opposed further layoffs by the big corporations and the auto firms in particular, in the hope of stemming the militancy. As the recession deepens, however, it becomes increasingly clear that the auto industries - like Argentina's domestic firms and small businesses - can't hold on without further production cutbacks and possibly shutdowns. Paul Heath Hoeffel is a Pacific News Service correspondent based in Argentina. Copyright, PNS, 1975. Peron The Michigan Daily Edited and managed by Students at the University of Michigan Tuesday, August 19, 1975 News Phone: 764-0552 'Ii' budget scut a low blow BY UNEXPECTEDLY slashing an additional $1.6 million from this year's University budget, the Michigan State Legislature has unfairly forced the administration to re-examine and reshuffle its budget priorities before the Sept. 18 Regents meeting. This year's budget debate has been among the most heated in recent m e m o r y, fueled by the inevitably austere stance taken by the governor and legislators and the forceful though failed attempts of university finan- cial officers to defend themselves against creeping infla- tion and inadequate funding. The Milliken reduction platform of a few months back was welcomed with open arms, but at least people saw it coming and came to view it as a reasonably fixed reference point for setting their priorities. Now, however, at the eleventh hour, the University abruptly learns it will have to live with an additional million and a half dollar setback; and it only has a few short weeks to distribute the shock, among its already overly burdened employes and programs. THE LEGISLATURE'S cutback represents a further dis- abling of the once revered university system in this state and sets a dangerously arbitrary-replete with the threat of double jeopardy-precedent for the determina- tion of university funding by our elected officials. Letters: End domination To The Daily: I REGRET the Spartacus Youth League's quarrel with the anti-tuition hike organizers, which seems to stem from SYL's own petrified version of Marx- ism. SYL is dubious about a mass student movement of ex- ploited consumers, since its theories concern rather the ex- ploitation of producers, i.e., the working class (controlled, of course, by a "vanguard party"). But workers as such, unlike students, have no direct and compelling interest in rolling back tuition increases or schol- arship cutbacks. While students and workers should coordinate their struggles to avoid com- ptition for pieces from the same shrinking pie, still the impending tuition struggle will essentially be a student strug- gle. Spartacus doesn't grasp the importance of the educational establishment in socializing peo- ple as alienated producers and passive commodity consumers. In themselves, groups like stu- dents, women, ethnic and cul- tuiral minorities aren't so rnuch ex loited as dominated. These managed and manipulated by groups and workers too a r e bureaucratic, hierarchic insti- tntions as personnel, producers, clients or consumers, which in- still and presuppose obedience to authority, deference to ex- perts, personalities deformed by an extreme division of laor, and a general incapacity to manage their own affairs, IN ADDITION, the schools provide a docile work force with marketable skill, assign posi- t ons in the oupationa struc- ture and "objectively" validate the predestined failure of the majority to chance their class position. There are more full- time students than workers in America, and we spend more and more of our lives as stu- dents as subordinates. Insofar as students take control over decisions - about tuition, for instance - formerly imposed on them by others, they reclaim a part of their freedom and ad- vance the common intere;t of. all the dominated. Like the French students in 1968, American students mI:ght even stimulate working people to start to place self-manage- ment at the center of their struggle. -Bob Black August 15 NEW Yokes- sw-sel Im I " "ki i 1 " I